The Ministry of Agriculture, Water, and Land Reform has called on the public to take a keen interest in and provide input to the National Ressetlement Policy, for which some of its criteria are being reviewed.

Speaking at the stakeholder consultative workshop at Keetmanshoop, the Director of Land Reform in the Ministry, Petrus Nangolo, says the criteria need to be reviewed to address resolutions taken during the second National Land Conference.

He says the government recently adopted a revised National Resettlement Policy, which aims to ensure equity in the redistribution of land to alleviate poverty.

"Now we are going to work on a document that's called criteria, and if you want to translate it differently, you can perhaps call it a manual or operational manual on how to implement that policy, and that's the document we bring before you. That document is a draft, and we need to interrogate it, read it, understand it, and I hope it was shared with you on time so that we can ask the constituencies you are representing today if they are going to be successful in their quest for resettlement through those criteria."

The ||Kharas Regional Council Chairperson, Joseph Isaack, called for collective inputs to ensure the revised criteria cater to previously disadvantaged people.